For pulling out of spot, and for parking into a spot, when it’s below zero and there’s ICE involved.
Where even the sturdiest shovel fails (like mine,) a heavy duty hammer does the trick.
I parked in a small puddle which froze overnight. I tried to feed the tires various materials to give it traction, I tried to push the car, I even tried to pour boiling water on the ice. Finally, the thought occurred to me that I could try a hammer. I wasn’t supremely confident it would work, I figured it would only break small chunks–but I was wrong! boy did it work! The ICE started breaking up and it was very speedy process. I was finally able to pull out.
Well, tonight it was freezing again and looking for parking, I found a decent spot others wouldn’t touch: because it had a large chunk of ice right in the middle (otherwise it was all clear, a great spot.) I got out of the car and used a hammer to break that sucker down, in about a minute I was able to park the car with no issues.
Almost everyone has a shovel (usually those dinky plastic things) but I’ve never seen someone with a hammer! They can be necessity.
Someone called in to the show a while back. The car had frozen solid into a large puddle and the caller wanted to know how to get it out. Tom and Ray suggested drilling holes, boiling water, etc. But they didn’t think of a claw hammer!
I remember that show. I was surprised about the boiling water idea. All that will do is spread smooth and then freeze. You wouldn’t make it any more slippery unless you had a Zamboni.
I’d be a little skeptical about suggesting a claw hammer, that the user may hit the tire and puncture it.
My buddy moved to the Phoenix area and I’ll be going there next week to run the Electric and air lines and get the new shop up and running.
Last winter I had just pulled into his shop…here in Wisconsin… and he and a client were just sitting around. I joked about them taking a break, when he told me they were just waiting for the parts delivery. A minute later I heard a vehicle coming and just said “I think your parts are here”, when the parts guy’s pickup came crashing through the overhead door.
That made us all sit up a little straighter!!!
The last place I lived their was so much silt collected in the driveway it was a soupy mess when it thawed in the spring. One Morning I went out to leave and my truck was frozen into the rut that had been made driving in. I don’t remember having to do much to get out…other than give it a little more gas to break free.
It was that year that I hired a friend with a Bobcat to strip off the top 3 inches and replace it with good traffic bond.
Many, many tears ago when we only had one car, I got a call from my wife who had been shopping in a department store. She said, the car won’t go. I asked her all the usual questions, would the engine start, could she hear anything when she stepped on the gas and all the answers were, I don’t know, it just won’t go.
I loaded a lot of tools into a large toolbox and walked several blocks to a bus line that went to the store,
When I got there, I just started laughing, my wife had driven onto a large puddle that had frozen over and broke through the crust and had a flat tire that had become frozen into the ice.
The only tool I needed was the bumper jack to pull the wheel up out of the ice.
My wife is a great mother (now great grandma), wife and cook but has the least mechanical aptitude of any person on the planet. I had to teach her how to use nail clippers.
I prefer salt, but being a man of collecting interesting tidbits I always loved the story of why there is a ball peen hammer. the way I understand it is the peen is the non hammer part of a hammer. So you have a regular hammer but there is a ball on the non regular hitting part of the hammer, the peen, thus a ball peen hammer. Stillson and monkey wrench are other interesting stories.
One other story, in the days of bumper jacks, a friend was stuck, jacked the car up with the bumper jack, and pushed the car until the jack fell over, coincidentally unstuck!
Both ends of the hammer head are functional. “Ball peen” refers to the use of the ball to spread and shape the metal. It also work-hardens the metal by compressing the surface. If you look at the other end of the head, you’ll notice that it too is radiused. The two ends of the head are used together to spread, smooth, and shape. You spread it some with the ball and then smooth the surface and further control the shaping with the less radiused other end of the hammer head. Do this on a leather bag (a sand-filled sack of leather) and you can make a bowl out of a flat piece of metal.
“Ball peen” comes from the description of the use of the ball to peen the metal.
Definition of PEEN
transitive verb
: to draw, bend, or flatten by or as if by hammering with a peen
Definition of PEEN
noun
: a usually hemispherical or wedge-shaped end of the head of a hammer that is opposite the face and is used especially for bending, shaping, or cutting the material struck
Nothing inconsistent with my description of the derivation of “ball peen hammer” . The only variant is that I described the use of the other end of the hammer’s head opposite the ball without using the nomenclature “face”. Look closely and you’ll notice that both ends of the head are radiused, the “face” with a far larger radius, both are used for used together to shape sheet metal.
I will admit that “convex” might have been a far better term to use than “radiused”. Were I to go back in time and start over, I would use the term “convex”.
Oh, and one use of the ball peen hammer is to work-harden the metal as well. That happens during the forming process.
TSMs got it right. As in peening over a rivet. The peen would be used to spread the protruding shank of the rivet, then the flat side to smooth it to reduce the sharp edges.
Even the 2 1/2 lb shaping hammer I use to make horseshoes. You use the rounded face when turning the flat bar into the horseshoe shape. The flat face would leave small creases on the inside edge of the shoe. Most of these hammers don’t have that much of a radius, so to tell without looking most Smithys will plane one side of the handle flat. As you hold the hammer…if your finger tips feel the flat side, you are using the flat of the hammer.
Straight peen and cross peen are also hammers that have a specific purpose
Imagine you want to make a pancake flipper for the kitchen. You have a piece of 3/8 X 1inch steel 9 inches long for the entire project.
You heat up one half to a bright orange heat…lay that heated part on the anvil and hammer with the cross peen. This would stretch the steel to widen the working end (you are hammering at a 90* angle to the steel) Of course toward the end of each heat you need to use the flat side to remove the ripples and flatten the blade.
Now that you have the blade done…you have to thin up and stretch the 1/2 that you planned for the handle. Now you heat that end and using the straight peen(still working at a 90* to the piece), you can hammer out and stretch the handle as long and thin as you like. Again, at the end of each heat (heating cycle) you use the flat side to smooth the imperfections left from the peen.
I’ve done a few of these for re-enactors and they seem to like just the handles peened with a large ballpeen and leave the peen marks for that “Crude look”.
One lesson I’ve learned over the years too is to take proper care of ball-peen hammers and not use them to hammer nails and such. The surface should be kept smooth and free of surface damage. Any surface damage will be transferred to the work.
Many people don’t realize that there are numerous different types of hammer, each designed to perform a specific task. But, than, I suppose it really doesn’t matter much to most people. But grab an artisan’s hammer and use it incorrectly and he’ll go nuts.
I had a very tiny ball peen hammer that I loaned out and it was returned to me in pieces. Apparently it was used to whale away on something that required a 3 pound hammer.
Sometimes during a very slow spell at work or to finish off a lunch hour I’d use that small hammer to tap out rings from old silver dollars or silver half dollars; all depending upon finger size.
Careful @MarkM; we could find out where you live and send some.
There was a good story about 10 years ago. Two brothers…one up in a northern snow state and the other in the nice warmth of the south. They were always playing practical jokes on each other.
The one in the north had a Semi Dump loaded with snow, covered with a good reflective tarp, and two drivers to do a non stop drive to the brothers house in the south. They showed up before anyone was awake and dumped the load in the brothers driveway.
Could you imagine if they had dumped the load on the wrong driveway.
A load of snow in the driveway sounds fun. When I was a kid in LA a couple of days each winter, after a storm, we’d drive up into the surrounding mountains to play in the fresh snow. And we didn’t even have awd or snow tires. Daredevils.
In San Francisco (where I live - bring me my load of snow) snowy mountains are too far away to visit readily, though some of the nearby peaks get a little bit most years. I’ve seen lots of pictures of San Francisco’s last significant snowfall, a few inches way back in the fifties. All-season tires work just fine here. The first rain in the fall is always interesting. Six or more months of greasy gunk on the streets makes them slightly slippery when wet, until it all washes away.
